


Don't Come Back (Come Back)

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (Not that he's really a character in it), Angst, But Mostly Hurt, Canon Divergence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, Post TLJ, Redeemed Ben Solo, fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24066253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Rey and Poe have been dating for almost a year; everything's been going well, and they've never had a real fight.Until a clash with newly redeemed, still-a-jerk Ben Solo gives them a reason to fight. And when Poe walks out in the middle of that argument, Rey assumes the worst.After all, he wouldn't be the first to leave
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 16
Kudos: 150





	Don't Come Back (Come Back)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome back to my grand old tumblr excavation!
> 
> I wrote this angsty one-shot in 2018. AKA there's a redeemed Ben Solo (who's still an asshole) and he isn't really a character, more of the motivation for the fight between Poe and Rey.
> 
> Also, I re-read this when I pulled it, and I cannot begin to Understand how I justified how much **drama** is in this!!! there's a few warnings as a result - 
> 
> **warnings**  
>  Heavy angst  
> Self-harm --> punching walls leads to damage of hands!  
> Angry Rey!

* * *

“I really kriffing hate that _you_ have to be the one to monitor him,” Poe snarls at her, and Rey rolls her eyes.

It’s a months old argument at this point, a recurring one, ever since Kylo Ren defected and returned as Ben Solo. He’d shown up, chagrined, exhausted, fully in submission, handed Rey his lightsaber, accepted both the hug and the slap offered to him by his mother, and entered willingly into Resistance custody.

Leia had asked Rey a personal favor: to watch over Ben and his rehabilitation, and to guide him back all the way to the Light.

And Poe – well, Poe doesn’t like it.

Right now, he’s shaking in fury – Ben had gotten a little fresh during their meeting at Central Command, implied that Rey was destined to be more than his mentor, made some disparaging remarks about Poe’s actions before the Battle of Crait, and then flat-out refused to listen to any of his suggestions about how to best engage the First Order Armada – and Rey doesn’t know how to talk him down without sounding patronizing.

“How does he not piss you off?” Poe demands.

“I mean, he does.” Rey smiles at her boyfriend of almost a year. “He really, really does. But, I look to the Force for serenity, and I remember that he’s struggling, a good deal,” and that’s absolutely true; as part of their mandatory conversations and shared meditation, Rey has come to learn a lot about Ben’s inherent anxieties and self-loathing. “And I know that when he lashes out, it’s because he’s hurting. It doesn’t make what he’s doing any better, but it changes how I respond to it. It flows through me, doesn’t change the way I feel.”

“So you’re saying, it’s a Jedi thing, and I’ll never understand it.” Poe glowers at her, and Rey sighs. To be honest, she’s handling Poe’s temper in this moment in the same exact way she often handles Ben’s.

It’s harder though, with Poe. She loves Poe in a way she’ll never love Ben. His anger hurts worse than Ben’s does; she has more to lose with him, weirdly enough, even if Ben Solo’s soul seems to be the constant asking price for galactic balance. Poe Dameron hating her means a lot more than Ben Solo hating her.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Rey soothes, although it’s getting increasingly difficult to remain calm. “That’s not what I’m saying at all, Poe. You aren’t listening to me.”

“And you aren’t listening to me.” Poe grips his hair. “I hate that you have to be alone with him, with all the shit he’s pulled. It makes me sick to my karking stomach to think about you locked in a room with him, absorbing his toxic shit for hours on end. It can’t be good for you.”

Rey bristles, at last, and Poe looks vaguely satisfied. In general, he’s much more interested in flat-out arguments than she is – passion could very well be Poe’s middle name, but the difference is Poe Dameron doesn’t run the risk of falling into the Dark every time he surrenders to a strong emotion.

“Because you know what’s good for me?” Rey raises her eyebrows, and she swears Poe cracks his neck. Gods. He’s infuriating, and she loves him for it half the time, but right now she could deal with a little less fire.

“I’m not saying that,” Poe raises his hand in supplication, but his tone is still argumentative, so her body language doesn’t change. _How did we get here?_ She wonders. _We’ve never really fought before, not over anything real. How are we having a brawl over Ben kriffing Solo?_ “I’m just saying that you have a notorious soft spot for Kylo, and I don’t think it’s good for you to spend time with him.”

“His name is _Ben_ ,” Rey snaps before she can stop herself. It had taken her months to get him to admit it – she just didn’t expect the uphill battle to continue with everyone else. “His name is Ben, and he’s my friend.”

“This clearly isn’t going anywhere.” Poe drags his hands through his hair in exhaustion. “I don’t want you to talk to him, but I don’t want to control you – and you don’t want to think for even a second that you could be wrong about him, even after the stunt he pulled when you left Luke.”

“So you’re saying I’m stubborn, _and_ I’m stupid?” Rey spits and keeps talking over him when he tries to start up again. “Because that’s rich, Poe, that’s really rich coming from you.”

“And what does _that_ mean?”

It’s a deeply uncomfortable silence that follows his question.

Rey is well acquainted with the silence of solitude after fifteen years spent on her own. But this silence, the one that stretches between two people, two people who love each other, who are committed to each other, who have whispered countless promises to each other in the quiet dark of this very room – it threatens to consume her. Rey swallows and avoids Poe’s eyes.

“I asked you a question. I said, _what does that mean_ , Commander.” He’s a Colonel, and the fact that he’d throw her rank into the mix right now –

She looks back at him, and the cold fury in his face only makes hers worse. It’s like a tidal wave of frustration, and grief, and anxiety rushing over her at once, and Rey has no idea what to do with it. So she shouts it.

“I mean, you don’t get to stand there and pretend that I’m the only person in this relationship who makes piss-poor decisions, Poe. You almost _died_ five weeks ago making a bad call – you endlessly sacrifice your personal safety for the common good, usually when I’m stuck in Command, staring at the radar, watching and praying, and _begging_ the Force to let you come back to me. It’s agony, Poe, it hurts to love you sometimes because you can be so karking stubborn. You always think you know best – whether it’s about Black One, or the Armada, or Ben Solo. I know he could have been more polite today, but you needed to acknowledge that he might know a little bit more about the First Order’s military patterns than you do!”

“So I’m stupider than Ben Solo?” Poe raises his eyebrows, his eyes flashing dangerously. 

[Of _course, you’re ‘destined to be together’, after all, like kriffing soulmates._ ]

His thought is bitter, and unintentional, and Rey knows he doesn’t mean it, but it lashes out and stings her worse than a whip all the same.

“Ben and I are _not_ destined to be together, Poe,” Rey says soothingly, her anger fading almost entirely, an ember now compared to a wildfire. “No, darling, that’s not what I was saying –“

“You heard that?” Poe looks sick to his stomach. “You – you read my thoughts just now – what the—”

Kriff. Kriffing hells. Rey feels tears flood her eyes at the betrayal that washes over Poe’s expression.

“No!” She almost shouts it, and Poe turns away from her. The back of his neck flames red. “No, Poe, not on purpose, I would _never,_ please, just look at me –“ He does, but the anger in his face has only gotten worse, and she flinches from it. Her next statement is whispered, and sounds weak even to her. “It was like you were saying it out loud, Poe, I didn’t, I would never look on purpose, not after what happened to you—"

“You just couldn’t control it,” Poe looks disgusted, and Rey feels impossibly small. “Because he’s getting to you-“

“No.” Rey shakes her head, wanting to defend Ben and his progress. “No, that’s not what’s happening—”

“I can’t be here right now.” Poe turns and walks to the door, and Rey’s anger flares to life once more at the sight of his retreating back.

She’s had a lifetime of watching people walking away from her. Not Poe. Not him, too.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Rey says desperately. “Poe! Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m getting out of this room.” Poe doesn’t turn around and just keys in the exit code. “I can’t stay here another kriffing second, sweetheart.”

It’s the usual endearment in that cold, angry voice that makes her beyond furious. She feels almost like she’s detached from her body when she says:

“If you walk out that door, don’t you _ever_ come back, Poe Dameron.”

Poe turns and looks at her, and she sees how angry he is, sees the way his fists are clenched, the way his jaw is set.

She knows he’s going to walk out.

Poe opens his mouth, raises a finger and then shakes his head, closes his mouth, and storms out the door.

If it was on hinges, he would have slammed it. Instead, it hisses shut slowly, mockingly, and she screams in frustration. Immediately, the small charging port where Beebee usually sits when he stays in her quarters flies off the ground and slams into the wall. Rey stares at it in horror, sees that it’s in pieces, remembers the damage and destruction she’s capable of.

Poe’s gone.

He chose to leave her, just like everyone else. And of course he did. He’s afraid of Ben Solo – because of Kylo Ren, because of his darkness, but look right there, at the smoking remains of Beebee’s little house - it’s not like she’s any different. She accepted long ago that she and Ben were meant to balance each other in terms of the Force, meant as two sides of the same coin.

Of course, Poe wouldn’t want her either when he realized that piece of knowledge. He’s afraid of her too. And he has every reason to be.

Rey screams again and grabs her staff, swinging it wildly, banging it into the wall over and over again. She punches the durasteel walls when the staff fails, punches it for almost a minute until blood runs down her knuckles, stains the wall. Rey screams quietly in her throat, more of a whimper now, and rests her hands on her knees.

At least she didn’t beg him to eventually come back as he walked away.

She’s learned that much. You don’t ask them to come back. It hurts all the more when they don’t.

* * *

Rey leaves her room, door still open, not two minutes after Poe abandons her. She can’t stay in that room – the room where he first told her he loved her, the room where he promised to always be there for her, the room where they shared _everything_ – she couldn’t stand there and look at the havoc she’d wreaked when out of control, couldn’t look at the bloodstain on the wall, at the tangle of sheets from where they’d lain together only this morning (only twelve hours ago, when the galaxy still felt like it had a home for her, a home at Poe’s side).

It’s almost lights out, so Rey wanders the hallway, wrapped in misery (she tries to go to Finn’s room, but she hears a set of giggles behind the door, realizes he’s having a private moment with Rose, and walks away dejected because that means _both_ her friends are busy, and _why doesn’t she have more friends_?), hands aching, eyes burning. She finds an abandoned utility closet near the hangar bay, one that stores flightsuits, and the obnoxious color actually makes her cry, it reminds her so much of Poe Dameron, his stupid holo-star face, his unruly curls, his confidence and fire and drive, all the things she admires and loves about him.

Poe left her because everyone leaves her. Rey curls up into a ball on top of a pilfered flightsuit that she bunches up like a nest, and she dwells on that piece of information. Poe left her. He’s gone. Tomorrow she’ll go back to her room, pick up the pieces (literally and figuratively), and find a way to push past this echoing cavern of grief inside of her because Rey’s a survivor, and Poe Dameron leaving her will not be the thing that kills her, no matter how much it feels like that.

She never should have let him in. She should never let anyone in.

Rey falls asleep crying, just like she had for so long on Jakku.

It feels, oddly enough, like home.

* * *

At some point during the night, she hears shouting, but she shrugs and curls up tighter into the corner of the supply closet, covering her face with her hands.

Her dreams are tormented, agonized. She’s on Jakku, and the last transpo off the planet is waiting just up ahead, a handsome man with curly black hair waving at her in his bright flightsuit, and she runs to him, she keeps running to him, but the sand pulls her down, threatens to swallow her whole, she can’t move forward, and eventually the man gives up on waiting for her and flies away.

Rey wakes up to light streaming into the closet, and she blinks wearily.

“She’s right here, Colonel.” Leia Organa sounds beyond done with whoever she’s talking to. Rey shifts upright and rubs her gritty eyes in time to see the General looking at her with fond exasperation. “Good morning, Commander. And _you!_ Fix this.” Leia barks the last part at somebody out of sight and walks away, leaving room for a new figure to fill the doorway.

“Rey!” Poe Dameron stumbles in, the automatic lights flickering on with his movement. “Oh, thank the Maker—" His eyes are shadowed, swollen, red – his hair’s never been more wild, and the stubble darkening his jaw just adds to his unkempt appearance. Rey looks at him in confusion as he falls to his knees three feet away from her, rambling almost incoherently.

She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, trying to be as small as possible as she regards him, and while she tries to wake up, she begins to pick up on some of what he’s saying. “—been going out of my mind, Sunshine, since I saw that you were gone, spent all night looking for you –”

“You were looking for me?” Rey asks, and her voice is scratchy from disuse.

Poe laughs shakily, and she tries to understand what’s happening, but she’s frankly exhausted. “I went back to the room sweetheart, and the door was open, and there was – there was _blood_ on the wall, Rey –“

“Oh.” Rey looks down at her hands, which are beginning to throb again, now that she’s awake. They’re swollen, bloody, purple and black in some places, scabbed over in others.

“Oh Force,” Poe sees where her attention has gone, and he lurches forward, eyes even more wild this time, to examine the damage. “Baby, what did you do?”

“Stop calling me _baby_ or _sweetheart._ It’s just confusing.” Rey swallows against a fresh wave of tears. Her brain’s finally agreeing with her enough for her to question what’s happening here. “You – you left me, Poe.”

“Yeah, for less than five minutes,” Poe tries to tilt his head into her line of sight but she stubbornly redirects her eyes to the ground. “Sweetheart, I came back not even five minutes later, I just needed to cool off, get my shit together.”

“ I told you if you left you shouldn’t come back.” Rey looks up then, feeling a part of her heart harden in a new, unexpected way. “You – you kriffing left me, Poe. I needed you, I needed to talk to you, and you just left me like I didn’t matter, in the middle of a fight.”

Poe turns pale under his natural tan, and Rey averts her eyes again. His discomfort stirs her sympathy, and she can’t have that. Will she have to avoid him until she stops loving him, if she’s this weak around him? Can she even stop loving him?

“You meant that?” Poe whispers. “I thought – I thought you were just blowing off steam, Rey, honest. I thought we both needed to cool down, and I was embarrassed at how negative my thoughts were, and I didn’t want you to think I thought badly of you at all, because I don’t, and I’ve never, but I know you think you and Ben are similar and I didn’t want you to get caught up in all that –”

Rey shakes her head, more tears swimming in her vision. “You left me,” she repeats, numbly. “I can’t wait around for people anymore, Poe, I can’t, not after Jakku - I can’t-” Her voice breaks towards the end, and she knows her shoulders are shaking from her suppressed sobs, but she cannot cry in front of Poe Dameron, you cannot let the people who break you know they’ve won -

“No,” Poe moans, almost as if he were in pain, and she forces herself to look at him, her hand covering her mouth as if she could push her tears back physically. “No, Rey, oh _gods._ I never meant to make you feel like that, I swear, I made a stupid, stupid choice, I see that now - I was trying to spare you my shitty thoughts, I wanted to calm down before we talked more in case I screamed something mentally again, I - I - oh kriff me.” 

Rey knows she should just ask him to leave. She’d resolved hours ago before falling into unconsciousness that she was better off alone. Poe Dameron is a weakness, after all. But, for whatever reason, instead of demanding he go, she says, “I hate that I’m so easy to leave behind.” 

Her voice is small, and it sounds more like Rey at four years old than Rey at twenty-one. Her voice wobbles, and shakes, and splinters, and no matter how tightly she wraps her arms around her middle, she still feels like she’ll fall apart. Why she keeps handing Poe Dameron so much to hurt her with is beyond her - she trusts him, or at least she did trust him, but he can leave her, and then where will she be? 

“That’s just not true.” Poe’s large, calloused hand wraps around one of her wrists tentatively, and he brings her hand up to his mouth slowly, giving her time to pull away, but Rey is so, so tired of fighting. He kisses the bruises on her knuckles, and it stings, but it helps to clear her mind a little. Poe keeps holding her hand as he says, fervently, staring into her eyes in a way that makes her want to squirm: 

“It’s not true, Rey. Gods. Don’t you know? You’re it for me, sweetheart. Wild rancors couldn’t drag me away from you. I love you, and I wanna spend the rest of my life with you. It would be physically impossible for me to really leave you. My body would rebel: my legs wouldn’t let me go, my heart would eject just to keep being near you. Gods, I’m no good with words, Sunshine, but please believe me when I say I wouldn’t be able to live if I left you, if I really left you.” 

Rey nods, miserably, wanting to believe him, but her heart aches. Poe’s expression crumbles when he reads whatever’s on her face, and he holds out his arms. “Please,” he whispers. “Please, let me hold you.” Rey thinks for a second before leaning forward, scooting into his embrace. Poe drops kiss after kiss in her hair, filling the space between them with promises and declarations that she knows she can believe, that she knows she should believe.

After a few minutes, she whispers, “I want to go home.” Poe understands immediately, and he gathers her up in his arms, standing up carefully. It’s not necessarily easy, she knows, given that there’s barely two inches of height difference between them, but Poe’s solid where she’s willowy, and she buries her nose in his strong, broad chest gratefully while he walks them back to her room. 

She makes a noise of complaint when he sets her down on the bed and walks away. “Just turning the lights off, sweetheart,” Poe whispers. 

“Sorry it’s a mess,” Rey mumbles, trying to kick a blanket over herself, but too tired to reach down. Poe gets the lights and comes back to the bed. He pulls his shirt over his head and then lies down next to her, pulling the blanket with him and wrapping her up in his arms at the same time. 

“Don’t apologize,” Poe whispers back. “We’ll fix it later.”

Rey nods, and she feels herself start to drift off with her ear over Poe’s heart. 

The last thing she hears is, “I love you,” and she hopes she remembered to say it back to him out loud before sleep overtakes her entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS FOR READING!
> 
> Seriously, I'd been writing fic for less than six months when I wrote this. And, while I've changed a lot as a writer since I wrote this, and I'm re-reading it kinda shaking my head (but also like, grinning, because I love angst) I still hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
